EEVblog #1337 - I Bought An Electric Car

[sandalcandal]

Hydrogen cars will never gain traction for one simple reason. You can't charge them at home, which is the greatest benefit of EV's.
Ok, home hydrogen solution do exist, in theory, but it's just a dumb idea.

I think a lot of people are locked into the idea of needing to go to a servo to refuel and fail to realise the benefit of being able to recharge at home or pretty much anywhere for that matter. Instead they get caught up in a false notion that they'll have to stress about keeping the EV charged up.

[coppice]

Price of a hydrogen isn't much better. Toyota Mirai is $US58,550 for a range of 508km and others in a similar ball park compared to a Tesla Model 3 LR AWD for $48,190 and a range of 568km.

In California (pretty much the only place you can actually get a Mirai) you can get a Toyota approved second hand Mirai, just off lease, for $15k, bundled with $15k of free hydrogen. Gee, those things are popular.

Hyundai have just started listing a hydrogen powered SUV in the UK. I assume its connected to some UK government scheme, as it makes no commercial sense - no hydrogen stations == no potential sales. It looks like a fairly basic SUV, and its 70k pounds. What a bargain.

[SilverSolder]

There is very little to commend a hydrogen car compared to a regular HEV, PHEV, or EV.

The long term future seems highly likely to be EV dominated, with a sprinkling of liquid fuel for special purposes (might be ethanol...  if we don't need so much of it).

I'd go for an ethanol-PHEV any day of the week! 

[maginnovision]

I don't know. That'd be roughly 3.5 TWh(avg 50kwh batteries per car and 70M cars a year) of capacity a year for new cars alone. Not that it's not possible but I don't think that'd be good for the world unless we have new batteries. How much earth would that require tearing up every year?

AFAIK we're only managing about 2TWh a year now and very very little of that is for cars.

[ve7xen]

Hydrogen cars will never gain traction for one simple reason. You can't charge them at home, which is the greatest benefit of EV's.
Ok, home hydrogen solution do exist, in theory, but it's just a dumb idea.

I think a lot of people are locked into the idea of needing to go to a servo to refuel and fail to realise the benefit of being able to recharge at home or pretty much anywhere for that matter. Instead they get caught up in a false notion that they'll have to stress about keeping the EV charged up.

Living in a dense urban city, I don't expect to be able to charge an EV at home either any time soon. I live in rental housing, along with 100,000s of others in the city, and I don't foresee the street parking I use being littered with EVSEs in the next decade+. I have many friends who own condos, and while there has been some progress there, it is generally an expensive struggle to get EVSE's installed in their off-street parking as well, and often leads to conflict for spots, fights with council over who pays for the electricity and so on. There are many folks that don't have enough control over the infrastructure part of things to decide where they charge.

A hydrogen powered car, all else being equal, would be somewhat more compelling since it can 'recharge' at a station much quicker than an EV could. I don't think they are technically a very feasible option, but I'm not convinced the home charging issue completely eliminates a market for them, at least until EV charging infrastructure is more developed.

I really think this charging infrastructure issue for those who don't live in single-family homes is a major roadblock to widespread adoption of EVs as they become more of a commodity. Until now they've been mostly a luxury or niche product, but if they want to really break into the mainstream, someone's going to have to come up with a solution for the people who don't own the land they park their car on most of the time.

[sandalcandal]

Living in a dense urban city, I don't expect to be able to charge an EV at home either any time soon. I live in rental housing, along with 100,000s of others in the city, and I don't foresee the street parking I use being littered with EVSEs in the next decade+. I have many friends who own condos, and while there has been some progress there, it is generally an expensive struggle to get EVSE's installed in their off-street parking as well, and often leads to conflict for spots, fights with council over who pays for the electricity and so on. There are many folks that don't have enough control over the infrastructure part of things to decide where they charge.

How much do you think you (or people like you) would pay to have an on-demand charging service? Either on a per call out basis or monthly subscription basis. For a monthly subscription fee, you'd get a regular (nightly or every second night) service that'd keep your EV topped up for regular use. You could pay extra for extra top-up or just use public charging if you go on a big trip rather than daily commuting.

[wilfred]

Charging an EV at home is just the least objectionable place to charge. It means you made it home. Second would be at work which is a stable demand location so you can reasonably know whether you'll find a charger available. And thirdly is when you go to a shopping mall or some other public destination where you will spend sufficient time to charge, where you will enjoy the anxiety of not knowing if a charger will be available. It will be OK for a while and as demand soaks up free charge spaces then there is a wait for expansion to meet demand and so on it goes.

For all the people who will not have home charging stations like renters and apartment dwellers an EV is far less attractive.

What actually happens at a public charge station when the battery is full? Is it OK to leave the car there until you are ready to drive away? Or are you expected to free it up asap.

Do people only buy an EV if they can charge at home? I expect that it is the case and this is what makes it look like home charging is appealing as opposed to least objectionable.

[sandalcandal]

What actually happens at a public charge station when the battery is full? Is it OK to leave the car there until you are ready to drive away? Or are you expected to free it up asap.

Its a real problem. Telsa charges people sitting idle at super chargers a fee if the the station is above 50% capacity, double if it's full. Super chargers are getting issues with over crowding so charging is also some of them are also limiting the amount of charge you can get , only up to 80% SOC so no slow last 20% current tapering and no end destination charging. Like any common resource, when there isn't enough to go around the less pleasant side of humanity starts to show.

Then you have **ckheads ICE-ing charger spots.

For all the people who will not have home charging stations like renters and apartment dwellers an EV is far less attractive.
...
Do people only buy an EV if they can charge at home? I expect that it is the case and this is what makes it look like home charging is appealing as opposed to least objectionable.

Also a known issue.

[Abstract]
...We find public charging infrastructure as alternative to home charging is only needed in some densely populated areas...

[Conclusion]
...
We conclude the following based on the aforementioned two perspectives.
1. Home charging is currently the most important charging option in most countries and will remain so in many countries with high home charging opportunity for users beyond current early adopters. In countries, or regions with low potential home charging availability, public charging infrastructure will be important as substitute.

2. Thus, public slow charging infrastructure as conditio sine qua non for PEV use will remain important mainly in some metropolitan areas, but not on national level - with few exceptions. For commuters, especially for those with no home charging option, a regular workplace charging is an important option.
...

Source: S. Á. Funke, F. Sprei, T. Gnann and P. Plötz, "How much charging infrastructure do electric vehicles need? 
A review of the evidence and international comparison", Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, vol. 77, pp. 224-242, 2019. Available Online (open access paper): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2019.10.024

Edit: That above study is a macroeconomic type study of charging infrastructure requirements and basically says the people people without access to home charging can be served using public slow (or fast) charging. It doesn't really go into the microeconomic cost impacts and desirability for individuals.

[james_s]

Charging an EV at home is just the least objectionable place to charge. It means you made it home. Second would be at work which is a stable demand location so you can reasonably know whether you'll find a charger available. And thirdly is when you go to a shopping mall or some other public destination where you will spend sufficient time to charge, where you will enjoy the anxiety of not knowing if a charger will be available. It will be OK for a while and as demand soaks up free charge spaces then there is a wait for expansion to meet demand and so on it goes.

My friends who have them all rave about being able to charge at home. They plug in their car when they pull into the driveway the same way they plug in their phone when they go to bed. They never have to go out of their way to gas up, they never have to think about it, just plug in each night and the car is always full and ready to go by morning. It's seriously the number one thing they all brag about and I can see it, I hate getting gas, if I could plug in a hose that would dribble gasoline into my car while I slept and give me a full tank in the morning I'd be all over that, I'd happily give up the ability to fill up from empty in a few minutes at a gas station.

If you are not able to plug in at home then an EV is a lot less attractive, I would not even consider one if I had to rely on charging stations, liquid fuel makes more sense for those use cases. EVs are not going to replace *all* ICE powered cars and they don't need to, it's simply one more energy source available for those use cases where it is ideally suited.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Living in a dense urban city, I don't expect to be able to charge an EV at home either any time soon. I live in rental housing, along with 100,000s of others in the city, and I don't foresee the street parking I use being littered with EVSEs in the next decade+. I have many friends who own condos, and while there has been some progress there, it is generally an expensive struggle to get EVSE's installed in their off-street parking as well, and often leads to conflict for spots, fights with council over who pays for the electricity and so on. There are many folks that don't have enough control over the infrastructure part of things to decide where they charge.

How much do you think you (or people like you) would pay to have an on-demand charging service? Either on a per call out basis or monthly subscription basis. For a monthly subscription fee, you'd get a regular (nightly or every second night) service that'd keep your EV topped up for regular use. You could pay extra for extra top-up or just use public charging if you go on a big trip rather than daily commuting.

This is already a thing : https://chargefairy.com/

[EEVblog]

What actually happens at a public charge station when the battery is full? Is it OK to leave the car there until you are ready to drive away? Or are you expected to free it up asap.

"EV etiquette" is that you free it up. And you program your car to release the lock when it's done.
And you get shamed on apps like PlugShare if you do it, people post photos of the offending vehicle and people keep track of serial offenders.

Do people only buy an EV if they can charge at home? I expect that it is the case and this is what makes it look like home charging is appealing as opposed to least objectionable.

Or another destination like work. That would be a huge part of the buying decision.

[EEVblog]

If you are not able to plug in at home then an EV is a lot less attractive, I would not even consider one if I had to rely on charging stations, liquid fuel makes more sense for those use cases. EVs are not going to replace *all* ICE powered cars and they don't need to, it's simply one more energy source available for those use cases where it is ideally suited.

Yes, I wouldn't have bought one if I had to rely on public charging infrastructure.

[mikeselectricstuff]

What actually happens at a public charge station when the battery is full? Is it OK to leave the car there until you are ready to drive away? Or are you expected to free it up asap.

"EV etiquette" is that you free it up. And you program your car to release the lock when it's done.
And you get shamed on apps like PlugShare if you do it, people post photos of the offending vehicle and people keep track of serial offenders.

In teh Uk at least, EVs are now getting so popular, with lots of non-enthusiast owners, that etiquette isn't going to be much of a thing.
For example it's common to see people charging to 100% on rapids, which is a waste of time due to the reduced charge rates. 
 
Many (most?) rapid chargers here have a pricing structure that discourages staying for long after charge has completed.

 

[sandalcandal]

How much do you think you (or people like you) would pay to have an on-demand charging service? Either on a per call out basis or monthly subscription basis. For a monthly subscription fee, you'd get a regular (nightly or every second night) service that'd keep your EV topped up for regular use. You could pay extra for extra top-up or just use public charging if you go on a big trip rather than daily commuting.

This is already a thing : https://chargefairy.com/

£3.99 per week, $AU7.35 per week
£207.48 per year, $AU382.19 per year
10kWh per week, 520kWh per year

Up to 50kWh per week (extra £14) allowed. Up to 2600kWh per year
Up to £17.99 per week, £935.48 per year, $AU33.14 per week, $AU1723.27 per year

Seems pretty darn cheap. I wonder how they make up for labour costs of sitting around while they charge up each person's car or how they'd scale to significant numbers when they can only charge one car at a time per van. 10kWh will take at least 12 min just sitting there for 50kW charging (Max charging rate for a Leaf and Ioniq). Maybe get ~4 charges delivered in an hour at best, £15.96 = $AU29.40 per hour then if they're charging people at home outside business hours they need to pay penalty rates on top of the need to make back all the other operating and capital costs.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I'm far from convinced that Charge  Fairy is a viable business - places with little off-street parking are likely to be too crowded at night to park the van.
There is also the issue of how many cars are actually able to  provide a way to unlock the charge flap while the car is locked without having the key - their website is very unclear on this.

[coppice]

What actually happens at a public charge station when the battery is full? Is it OK to leave the car there until you are ready to drive away? Or are you expected to free it up asap.

"EV etiquette" is that you free it up. And you program your car to release the lock when it's done.
And you get shamed on apps like PlugShare if you do it, people post photos of the offending vehicle and people keep track of serial offenders.

In teh Uk at least, EVs are now getting so popular, with lots of non-enthusiast owners, that etiquette isn't going to be much of a thing.
For example it's common to see people charging to 100% on rapids, which is a waste of time due to the reduced charge rates. 
 
Many (most?) rapid chargers here have a pricing structure that discourages staying for long after charge has completed.

While the UK car market is driven by the company car sector, the mass careful efficient usage of cars will never happen. e.g. the studies showing PHEVs are popular in the UK, because of tax credits, but few of them are ever plugged in.

[coppice]

I'm far from convinced that Charge  Fairy is a viable business - places with little off-street parking are likely to be too crowded at night to park the van.
There is also the issue of how many cars are actually able to  provide a way to unlock the charge flap while the car is locked without having the key - their website is very unclear on this.

I expect there will be a long term Charge Fairy like business, specifically to get people who let their battery exhaust moving again. If those Nissan vans can charge multiple vehicles per trip they must be packed full of batteries. I wonder how heavy they are? Have you see the kind of reinforced trucks battery makers use to deliver their products?

The people with the weakest ability to charge their own car are mostly the people with the least space for a van to park for an extended period to recharge their car. Also, the economics of having someone sit around waiting for a charge cycle to complete, before moving to the next car, seems bizarre.

[james_s]

I expect there will be a long term Charge Fairy like business, specifically to get people who let their battery exhaust moving again. If those Nissan vans can charge multiple vehicles per trip they must be packed full of batteries. I wonder how heavy they are? Have you see the kind of reinforced trucks battery makers use to deliver their products?

The people with the weakest ability to charge their own car are mostly the people with the least space for a van to park for an extended period to recharge their car. Also, the economics of having someone sit around waiting for a charge cycle to complete, before moving to the next car, seems bizarre.

Batteries don't make sense in that application, just mount a diesel genset in the back of a van. The idea is emergency use to get somebody to a proper charging station, and I doubt that charging a battery from utility power and transporting it somewhere to dump some of the charge into another battery is going to be greatly more efficient than just running a generator on site to charge the end user's battery.

[james_s]

"EV etiquette" is that you free it up. And you program your car to release the lock when it's done.
And you get shamed on apps like PlugShare if you do it, people post photos of the offending vehicle and people keep track of serial offenders.

In teh Uk at least, EVs are now getting so popular, with lots of non-enthusiast owners, that etiquette isn't going to be much of a thing.
For example it's common to see people charging to 100% on rapids, which is a waste of time due to the reduced charge rates. 
 
Many (most?) rapid chargers here have a pricing structure that discourages staying for long after charge has completed.
[/quote]

I suspect this will be adjusted as needed to keep things working. If people are lounging at charging stations it's little more than a firmware or pricing update to create means of discouraging this. People will drive miles to buy gas that is a few cents cheaper per gallon, if you jack up the price progressively on time spent on the charger people will get out as soon as they can.

[ve7xen]

Living in a dense urban city, I don't expect to be able to charge an EV at home either any time soon. I live in rental housing, along with 100,000s of others in the city, and I don't foresee the street parking I use being littered with EVSEs in the next decade+. I have many friends who own condos, and while there has been some progress there, it is generally an expensive struggle to get EVSE's installed in their off-street parking as well, and often leads to conflict for spots, fights with council over who pays for the electricity and so on. There are many folks that don't have enough control over the infrastructure part of things to decide where they charge.

How much do you think you (or people like you) would pay to have an on-demand charging service? Either on a per call out basis or monthly subscription basis. For a monthly subscription fee, you'd get a regular (nightly or every second night) service that'd keep your EV topped up for regular use. You could pay extra for extra top-up or just use public charging if you go on a big trip rather than daily commuting.

To come up with that number I'd have to figure out the TCO versus an ICE, and decide if and how much premium I might be willing to accept to use an EV. I haven't gone too far down that rabbit hole. My mileage needs are relatively low (fairly short commute), so this might be a viable model for me, but that also means such a service wouldn't make too much money from me. Not sure how the economics work. Also seems an inefficient way, in man hours an electricity (assuming it's battery-based and not a truck with an ICE genny which just defeats the whole purpose).

There's another psychological factor that goes into it too, I think. If one buys an EV, they need to always have a plan to keep it charged for the lifetime of the vehicle. While they might have a solution to that today - say a shared charging station in their apartment's parking structure, or at work, a lot can change in one's personal life during that lifetime. I think this creates a mental barrier to purchasing an EV if you don't have charging infrastructure under your own control - you might need to move, or you might lose your job, etc. This will go down as charging infrastructure gets built out and more common, but for now it's a pretty big barrier for people in my kind of situation.

Though there are exceptions. A friend's colleague purchased a new Tesla without any real plan for keeping it charged. Ultimately she was unable to convince her strata council to allow a charger to be installed at her parking spot. Apparently once in a while she goes to a public charge point to top it up. So it seems to not be a barrier for everyone, but I wonder if she'd have made the same decision if she realized what the outcome was going to be. It sounds like she expected that council would permit her to have her own charger.

With more and more options for not owning a car at all (we have multiple options for both short and long term car shares here), I wonder if this is a market that should really just be encouraged to drop individual car ownership entirely, and at least the longer term car shares are in a pretty good position to be converted to EV. The short term ones have already built out pretty substantial parking infrastructure, so with minor adjustments to their approach (to make sure they don't get run down or out of reach of a charge point) can probably also be converted relatively easily.

[SilverSolder]

The psychology of a lot of people (undersigned included) is to own their car...  so you can keep your stuff in it, not have to worry about what previous users did on the back seat or how sick they got driving home from a booze party, or the farmer using it after shoveling muck, etc. etc. etc.  -  there is much more to car ownership than transportation from A to B!

[Ed.Kloonk]

I expect there will be a long term Charge Fairy like business, specifically to get people who let their battery exhaust moving again. If those Nissan vans can charge multiple vehicles per trip they must be packed full of batteries. I wonder how heavy they are? Have you see the kind of reinforced trucks battery makers use to deliver their products?

The people with the weakest ability to charge their own car are mostly the people with the least space for a van to park for an extended period to recharge their car. Also, the economics of having someone sit around waiting for a charge cycle to complete, before moving to the next car, seems bizarre.

Batteries don't make sense in that application, just mount a diesel genset in the back of a van. The idea is emergency use to get somebody to a proper charging station, and I doubt that charging a battery from utility power and transporting it somewhere to dump some of the charge into another battery is going to be greatly more efficient than just running a generator on site to charge the end user's battery.

The road service vehicles here, I think, will eventually need to carry what ever is needed to facilitate getting the car to the charging bay. They already bring petrol if you're out and if you aren't able to drive off, they send a tow truck.

[james_s]

I certainly like owning my own car, for those reasons in addition to the ability to control precisely what happens with it, keep the seat adjusted just the way I like it, the cushion molded perfectly to my backside from hours of sitting in it. The radio is set up just the way I like it, with just the stuff I want to listen to on the thumb drive or CD, the HVAC settings are always the way I like them, mirrors adjusted, everything. It's mine and nobody else messes with it. I can upgrade, modify and customize the car any way I like, I can maintain it myself and always know it's done right, and I can drive the exact same car for 20 years if I want to.

Not everybody cares about those things though, there are certainly people who don't need to own a car, and indeed many of the urban dwellers I work with don't.

As for the circumstances in the other post, circumstances change. Buying a car is not quite the major life commitment of something like buying a house. If your circumstances change you can sell the car and buy something more suitable. It's rarely financially advantageous to replace cars frequently but it doesn't have to be a major financial hit either. The key is to buy a car of similar age to the one you are replacing, the greatest depreciation hit is usually in the moment you drive it off the lot and it becomes a used car, followed by the first year or two of ownership. If you keep upgrading to new cars within the rapid depreciation period then you keep paying that hit over and over but if you sell a 5 year old car and buy a different 5 year old car for example it can be pretty much a wash. 

[Ed.Kloonk]

I worked for a lady once who thought that the Merc sitting outside was old because it had 100,000kms nearly clocked up.

Ashtray full! Sell the car.

 

[ve7xen]

As for the circumstances in the other post, circumstances change. Buying a car is not quite the major life commitment of something like buying a house. If your circumstances change you can sell the car and buy something more suitable. It's rarely financially advantageous to replace cars frequently but it doesn't have to be a major financial hit either. The key is to buy a car of similar age to the one you are replacing, the greatest depreciation hit is usually in the moment you drive it off the lot and it becomes a used car, followed by the first year or two of ownership. If you keep upgrading to new cars within the rapid depreciation period then you keep paying that hit over and over but if you sell a 5 year old car and buy a different 5 year old car for example it can be pretty much a wash.

Just from talking to people I think it's not an insignificant psychological hangup for people considering buying EVs. Whenever I discuss this with folks, it almost always comes up, if not just writing it off because charging will be a struggle, they may have considered possible solutions to this, but it always comes back to 'will this be sustainable for me long-term'. Nobody *wants* to replace a car that they like and enjoy just because they can no longer fuel it conveniently. You're never going to have that problem with an ICE or hybrid in the near future. Personally I absolutely *loathe* the process of buying and selling vehicles. It is painful on both ends, used or new, and when I buy a car I expect it to last me 10 years or more. There's a bit of a mental block to get over for people who have traditionally owned ICEs, and this is just one factor of many that goes into it. Fundamentally I think it is down to a lack of feeling of control over their freedom, if they can't control the charging. It's well and good to say 'well if your employer's parking lot decides the EVSE isn't profitable and rip it out, you can just buy a new car or choose to leave it parked for a few hours at a chargepoint once in a while! NBD!', but I don't think that really does anything to convince people to buy it anyway.